[arin-ppml] maintenance fees for legacy space holders

[John Paul Morrison]

On 9/4/2008 1:17 PM, Owen DeLong wrote:
> The problem comes in trying to justify why you have a different
> pricing model for Legacy than for everyone else who is (and has
> been) paying the standard fees for years.
>   
This isn't that hard.

First of all, there was no fee specified at the time they were given. 
And IP addresses were given out, no strings attached, with no 
expectation that they would come back, so why would there be any 
expectation of a recurring charge? If an item was given away for free 
with no terms of service, how can one argue that a "service" whether 
it's whois/DNS, or PPML, be tacked on later and then charged for? Under 
that light, $10/year seems fair, even charitable of Legacy holders to 
pay, given there's likely been little change since the original 
assignments.

Second, there's no real justification for any costs to Legacy holders. 
The addresses were given out while the administration of the Internet 
was publicly funded, by the NSF, CA*Net (in Canada) etc., so any real 
work has already been paid out of tax dollars. The allocation is simply 
an entry in a database, or back of a napkin for that matter. It's great 
that it's recorded in Whois, but it's not a requirement that it be that way.

For the sake of argument, someone could document all the Legacy 
allocations and publish an RFC and say 'that's the historical record' 
and do away with any whois, other requirements, or ARIN's involvement 
with all of Legacy space for that matter, and that would be the 
historical record for all time, unless anyone cared enough to make minor 
revisions as a courtesy. What's to distinguish one Legacy assignment 
from another? 127.0.0.0/8 is assigned in an RFC, so are the Class E 
addresses and many others. I'm pretty sure the RFC process pre-dates 
whois, especially since 811 prior RFCs were published before they got 
around to publishing the one for Whois, but I could be wrong. (And if 
this Legacy holders RFC were published on April 1, I think that would 
definitely absolve the Legacy holders of any obligation to chip in for 
their 1/5000th share of the costs of hosting and maintaining the RFCs!)

Especially in light of IPv4 address exhaustion, would anyone like to 
reclaim 127.0.0.0/8 or the Class E space, or parts of Legacy space? Yes, 
of course if we had the chance to do it all over, we would do things 
differently, but we can't. If people don't like that, that's too bad. In 
practical terms, IP address assignments are permanent and irrevocable.

> If we're going to drop the annual maintenance fee to some lower
> level, I'd like to see that happen across the board rather than
> just for legacy holders.  Thus, we'd need to calculate it
> in those terms.
>   
It's sounding like it's just not worth the effort to collect a token 
amount.
> Owen
>
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